Welcome to Experience Matters!

A collection of internship and co-op experiences completed by Grand Valley students.

Grand Valley students are doing amazing things through professional experiences outside the classroom. This site gives viewers an inside look at these experiences. See some spotlighted experiences below, or click on View Experiences above to find more!

Experience Matters

John
Major: Engineering - Electrical
During the time spent here, I was able to be involved in many different areas. Anywhere from fixing problems that arouse in the production line (both hardware and software), to developing software and hardware used to test new units going through qualification testing. The task that I was able to spend the most time on was writing/updating code for stations that were being upgraded from Windows XP machines to Windows 7. Much of the hardware used in Windows XP is not supported in Windows 7, therefore the code had to be altered to communicate with a new pieces of hardware. This gave me the opportunity to learn how many different communication protocols work, and how to interface with many different components.

Tatiana
Major: Health Professions
During my internship, I rotated through the hospital. I spent most of my time in finance, patient support and cardiac with some days observing labs, conferences, and the play room.
Most of my work in finance was based around getting new bills from the post, sorting them and putting them into the computer.
In the cardiac department, I spent a lot of time updating charts and making sure they charts are where they are supposed to be in the hospital. I observed some cardiac conferences about patients and planning their treatment. I also observed some cardiac cath procedures.
During my time in patient support, I helped release copies of patient charts requested under the Freedom of Information act. I also logged complaints, compliments, thank you cards and parliamentary questions on the database.
I visited the microbiology, histology, biochemistry and hematology labs for a few hours each lab to get a taste of what they do and how it is important. Because I didn't have a degree, they couldn't let me do any work in those labs, as that is customary in Ireland.

Austin
Major: Health Professions
I sat in on bed meetings, which was an overview of how full the hospital was for the day with beds, how many nurses they had on as well as PCA's and trying to make sure that every floor was staffed correctly and just an overview of what the day may look like with surgeries, patients getting discharged, etc.